


A Very Serious Late Night Conversation

by singingwithoutwords



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes is a Good Boyfriend, Dorks in Love, Fluff, Insecure Tony, M/M, Mpreg, giftfic, slight a/b/o
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-08 00:06:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5475578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singingwithoutwords/pseuds/singingwithoutwords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Tony is insecure, Bucky is supportive, and some sleep is missed out on in favor of things which are not sexy but still good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Very Serious Late Night Conversation

**Author's Note:**

> [WinterIron Holiday Exchange](http://winterironholidayexchange.tumblr.com/) gift for the lovely [Eruchii92](http://erucchii92.tumblr.com/) over on tumblr, who likes insecure!Tony, sweet!Bucky, mpreg, fluff, and a/b/o.

There were arms around Tony again.

He wasn’t really used to that yet, having someone’s arms around him and actually feeling safe that way.  He’d gotten un-used to it in the long months after Pepper told him very gently that they just weren’t working, that she loved him but she didn’t love him, and he deserved someone who could do both.

After being with Pepper, one-night-stands just hadn’t been appealing, and he’d learned to get by with no one else in his bed, right up until James Barnes shuffled into his life on Captain America’s heels.

Which brought him back to the arms around him.

Him and Bucky was… weird.  They’d sort of happened at some point between Steve dragging Bucky home and Bucky falling asleep in Tony’s bed like he belonged there.  It was hard to pinpoint when they went from Steve’s buddies to being buddies themselves, or from buddies to casual lovers, or from casual lovers to something deeper.  It seemed like every major milestone of their relationship happened behind Tony’s back, and then he’d turned around and it was already done.  Tony honestly couldn’t even figure out when exactly Bucky had moved in with him, which is a thing most people probably would have noticed.

Not that he was complaining.  Tony had no objections whatsoever to Bucky spooning him all night, every night (minus nights he spent in the workshop or when one or both of them was away on business).  He definitely was not opposed to that.  At all.  He liked it so much he’d be willing to say so out loud if someone asked.

Bucky snuffled - that was the only word Tony’s vast vocabulary could muster, _snuffled_ \- against Tony’s neck and tightened his arms slightly, his metal thumb tracing idle circles against the barely-visible bump at Tony’s waist.

Their baby.

An unplanned pregnancy.  At his age.  The Board of Director had shit their collective pants, and he’d half expected Pepper to murder him then and there when he told her, but everyone seemed to be coming to terms with it and no blood had been shed on SI’s expensive carpeting.

The media was having a blast, like they usually did when Tony so much as breathed a little different.  He’d long since learned to tune it out, and he was physically incapable of caring any less what they had to say about him because of it.  At least Bucky wasn’t so much in the limelight, and Captain America had already made it very clear that asking Tony vulgar questions during interviews was a Bad Idea, so there was that.

Not like the press could be harder on Tony than he was on himself.

Privately, in the middle of the night when sleep just wasn’t coming but he didn’t want to wake Bucky by getting up, Tony found himself running through the enormous list of reasons he hadn’t had a kid already, most of which boiled down to ‘because I’m an awful human being and I’m going to fuck the kid up for life’.  It was easy to put that list aside during the day, when he had other things to occupy his mind and he could see the way Bucky watched him like he was the most amazing thing in the world.  Not so much at night when he was alone with no one but his own brain for company.

At night, the list dragged itself out and ran through his brain on a loop.  Everything he’d ever done wrong, every flaw he had as a person, every harsh criticism anyone’d ever thrown in his face.  It was a pretty long list, so it took a while to get through, but he figured tonight he’d probably get three or four full repeats before morning.

“You’re thinking too loud,” Bucky mumbled into Tony’s hair, startling him.  “Stop it.”

“Make me,” Tony said automatically.  “Did I wake you up?”

“Nah- just missed you.”

“Oh my God, you are so _cheesy_ ,” Tony accused, even though he could feel himself grinning at the warm sensation he always got just behind the reactor when Bucky said something unbelievably sappy and sweet.

“The cheesiest,” Bucky agreed, kissing Tony’s neck.  “Can’t sleep?”

“Brain’s a little active tonight,” Tony admitted, hoping Bucky would take that at face value and just go back to sleep.  No point in both of them losing sleep because Tony seemed to have a pathological need to undermine everything good in his life.

Of course, Bucky wouldn’t have lasted long enough in Tony’s bed to get him knocked up if he were that easy to fool.  “Is your brain concentrating on anything in particular tonight?” he asked, peppering light kisses along Tony’s shoulder.

“Would you believe me if I said no?”

“Nope.”

“No point in lying then?”

“None whatsoever,” Bucky agreed, heaving himself up and over Tony, flopping on his other side so that they were face-to-face in the dim glow of the arc reactor.  “What’s wrong?”

Tony sighed, closing his eyes.  “Nothing,” he said, truthfully, because nothing was actually wrong.  Everything was absolutely perfect, outside his own head.

“Mmhmm,” Bucky said agreeably, carding his fingers through Tony’s hair and just lying there not saying anything else, because he was an asshole and Pepper taught him how to fight dirty, Tony knew she did, everyone knew she did, why did she have to keep denying.

Tony managed to bite his tongue for a whole minute, slowly relaxing while Bucky played with his hair, before he _had_ to break the silence.  “I feel I should start off by saying I am intellectually aware that this is bullshit,” he said, “but seriously, I’m pretty much guaranteed to fuck this parenting thing up.  You know that, right?”

“You think so?” Bucky asked, like they weren’t discussing the doom of their child here.  “Because I’m gonna have to disagree, and you know how I hate disagreeing with you.”

“James.  Bucky.  Buckaroo.  I’m serious.”

“So am I.”  Tony opened his eyes to find Bucky watching him in that calm neutral non-judgey way he had that made Tony feel like even if he did fuck up, things would still turn out okay.  “The fact that you’re even worried you’ll mess up is a pretty good sign of the exact opposite.”

“I did say I knew it was bullshit,” Tony pointed out, sighing.  “It’s just...”

“It’s just late, and you can’t sleep, and that’s when your brain decides to be an ass?” Bucky guessed.  “Yeah, I get that.”

“I mean, it’s not like I really know what good parenting is, and research is _actually useless_ , none of the so-called experts can seem to agree on which way is up, what even is _with_ that,” Tony complained.  “Thousands of years omegas have been having kids, you’d think by now we’d have at least a few things figured out.”

“Maybe you can write your own book,” Bucky suggested, grinning.  “I bet it’d be a best-seller.”

“I do _not_ want child-rearing to be my legacy,” Tony groused.  Bucky continued to grin.  “And I know you’re distracting me.  Stop it.”

“Of course I’m distracting you.  I’m very good at being distracting.  Distracting is my natural state of being.”

“I’ll say,” Tony agreed.  “Speaking of, get back where you belong- if you sleep on your arm like that, you’re gonna regret it, and I am going to laugh, okay.  I’m going to laugh at the robo-patterns in your side and how your ribs hate you.”

“So mean,” Bucky said with an over-dramatic sigh.  “Maybe I just want to see your handsome face.”

“Then I can roll over,” Tony countered. “ _My_ prosthesis doesn’t affect one side more than the other.”

“True,” Bucky conceded, hauling himself back over Tony so he was no longer pinning his metal arm to the mattress, then helping Tony turn to face him (he wasn’t ungainly yet by any means, but the extra weight was definitely becoming noticeable).  “Better?”

“Much,” Tony said, shifting a bit closer.  “Now shut up and go back to sleep.”

“You first,” Bucky said, kissing Tony’s temple.  “Unless you wanna go down to the shop?”

“I’m pretty sure Jarvis banned me for the night,” Tony said.  “Apparently he’s forgotten who made him.  I’ve decided community college is too good for him- he can go work at McDonald’s.”

Bucky snorted.  “You do realize that would only make world domination easier for him, right?”

“Jarvis would be a great global dictator,” Tony said, shrugging.  “And since he’s functionally immortal and rampancy is a storytelling tool created for the purpose of drama and nothing more, we’d never have to worry about replacing him.”

“You have very over-thought this, doll,” Bucky said, laughing.  “Stop planning world domination by proxy and go to sleep.”

Tony huffed indignantly, then yawned.  It was past midnight and he’d had a long day, so sleep was probably a good idea.  He should definitely try that.  “Fine.  But only as a favor to you.”

“You spoil me,” Bucky joked, draping his metal arm over Tony’s side and pulling him even closer.

“Mm,” Tony agreed, closing his eyes.  He could worry about whether or not he was cut out for parenting later- right now he had a warm bed, a hot alpha, and some sleep to catch up on.


End file.
